Expert tips to help stub out smoking for good

Last updated at 18:39 05 June 2007

QUESTION: I’m a longtime smoker – 10 to 20 a day - and desperate to give up. I’ve stopped several times but never for good. Cigarettes are my comfort even though I know they’re damaging my poor body – as well as others. Help!

ANSWER: You’re right about smoking damaging your body: tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, many of which are highly toxic, including carbon monoxide (odourless, colourless, poisonous and lethal in large doses).

It’s the main gas present in cigarette smoke, where it’s found in quantities 500 times greater than the ‘safe’ amount in industrial plants.

Nicotine meanwhile, is as addictive as cocaine or heroin and makes smokers psychologically as well as physically dependent, often giving insecure people the illusion of self confidence: ‘I’ve always struggled with shyness and the whole action of smoking gives me confidence to speak directly to people – even though I know it’s a false security blanket’, one young woman told us.

The NHS website, givingupsmoking.co.uk, lists a range of proven ways to stop, from acupuncture and hypnotherapy to the new prescription drug Zyban and nicotine replacement therapy (patches, gum, nasal spray, lozenges and inhalers).

One colleague reports that sucking NiQuitin CQ Lozenges has helped her kick the habit (£8.99 for 36, in mint and original flavours, tel 0800 092 9392).

The key to stopping for good, say experts, is to understand that while your conscious mind can know and respect all the bad things about smoking, the powerful pre-conscious mind (the one targeted by tobacco ads) can override all your best intentions so you’re reassured that smoking is fine – and you need/deserve it to relax, keep thin, be social.

Gloria Thomas, practitioner in contemporary psychotherapy, uses a range of holistic therapies to treat wannabe-non-smokers on a one-on-one basis (she’s had great success with another colleague), including hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, exercise and diet (see below for details). She has also developed a self-help Smokers Toolbox CD (£12.99 for YOU readers plus p&p from www.gloriathomas.com).

‘Smokers have an attachment to their cigarettes, which is almost like a relationship with a person. The most important thing they can understand is that no outside resource can make them stop smoking. It can help, but the important resource is inside your self. So you really have to want to stop.’

Here are Gloria’s tips:

· Create a mental blueprint of yourself as a non-smoker – healthy, confident, full of energy and vitality. See your glowing skin, white teeth and smell your fresh breath and hair. Remember: smoking is a behaviour you’ve learnt – it is not who you are.

· Believe you can stop: write down three limiting beliefs about stopping smoking, eg smoking relaxes me, I can’t cope without a cigarette, it’s hard to stop smoking. Think what your life will be like in five, ten or 20 years if you stick to this pattern of thinking. Challenge it by being open to other possibilities: eg I can stop smoking, quitting could be easy, I will enjoy being a non-smoker.

· Set a date: pick mid-cycle (PMS seems to exacerbate withdrawal symptoms) but be aware that if you still feel reluctant, it won’t work. If it’s important enough to you, you will be successful eventually, if not immediately.

· Don’t worry that you have to stop smoking forever: just do it one day at a time.

· Set a goal of leading an all-round healthier life: follow a detox programme (see opposite) to help quell the munchies and get you fitter quicker. (Gloria’s colleague nutritionist Alexsandra Rehlinger specialises in helping smokers, tel: 020 7439 7332.)

Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking, published by Penguin Books. The international bestseller, which is said to have helped millions of people to quit. To order a copy post free, contact the YOU bookshop tel 0870 162 5006, www.you-bookshop.co.uk